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My Top priority for the next 10 years is to get Java 8 Support in the Notes Client and Domino Server. And that the Notes Client and Domino Server will run on future versions of Windows. Nice to have will be Mac support, but not really needed for us. An Upgrade of the used Java frameworks in the client and server would be nice, but is not very important.

This will give us time to port our application to a new platform. For the migration our top priority is that we will get a tool or an API from IBM which allow us to create a viewer (an editor would be a dream) for NotesRichText with near 100% fidelity. Our use case: We already use the RenderToRtitem function to save a Notesdocument with the corresponding form to Richtext and then export the rich text as DXL and store the data in a DB/2 BLOB. But to View the DXL with 100% fidelity the Notes client is still needed. So please IBM if you really want to help us, develop a small light weight Notes richtext viewer (or an editor) and allow this to embedd it in our new applications. This will solve every data retention problems for us. And please do not try to solve this with a conversion tool from Rich text to HTML, because you have tried this so often and failed every time.

I think that my wishes are really easy to fullfill, because the Java 8 integration is already finished and released on the mac and the richtextViewer (editor) for the data retention problem should be only a very small amount of work.

Ralf, why don't you export your Notes documents to PDF, so you wouldn't need any viewer for NotesRichText? There are PDF converters for Notes out there that are capable of achieving 100% or near 100% fidelity. I'm not going to mention any specific vendor here as I'm highly biased :) In that way, you will solve your data retention problem.

must be Designer as an Eclipse Plugin (so we can use a newer version of Eclipse) and Java 8. Oh, and a smaller footprint in Citrix would be great but I am not holding my breath for that one - will just go browser based :o)

Domino Data Services is already there. I then vote for Java 8 too but to be honest I am not sure if I really need it.

Putting something like Midas into the product would probably help but for sure this would only mean that I can run faster.

My boss loves the Notes Client. It is what let us still use IBM Notes and I have been waiting for years for some formal announcement from IBM that they are going to pull the plug (they might say it differently but I hope they do it in a way that there is little room for misinterpretation).

@David i do Not know of any Product which can generate a PDF out of notes Rich text with good Fidelity. Most look more like a Print of the Rich text and we all know that printing is One of the weak Point of Notes. If you like you Can send me a Link to your Solution. Ralf.petter(at)Gmail.com

Java 8 is no panacea, but it makes it easier to use modern code samples and Java libraries.

If XPages is part of the roadmap, then current versions of Extension Library (once proven on OpenNTF) should be rolled into fix packs or whatever they're called.

If a commitment to XPages is demonstrated to the community, I would expect we'll see completion of the Designer plugin for Eclipse as well as the new server homepage (dev branches of both are openly visible on OpenNTF's Stash) in a reasonable timeframe. That will replace Domino Designer with virtually no effort from IBM and possibly change minds for some who resist open source add ons.

XPages may have a future disconnected from Domino in Bluemix (cloud is key for IBM, I accept that). It still has the strength of rapid development for non-citizen developers. Could Cloudant be used as an alternate backend for e.g. Resource Reservations (an XPages version is already on OpenNTF with Java MVC approach, so using Cloudant as a storage medium should not be rocket science)?

If Domino as a datastore is in the roadmap of app dev (and IBM have struggled to combine it with the cloud vision for app dev of Bluemix), Nathan's work on GraphNSF in OpenNTF Domino API should be on everyone's radar. The more I've looked at other graph implementations, the higher regard I have for what's there. I'm yet to see one as stable and multi-model. Apache Cassandra, for example, is proven but there are doubts about its future prospects based on a similar silence. For IBM Graph to have a long term future, IBM may need to step into that gap.

Transactional processing on Domino was mentioned above. Look at OpenNTF Domino API, it's provided it for some time. (Some may call for OpenNTF Domino API or other community tools to be incorporated into the core. I am against that as a bad use of resources.)

The one thing not mentioned above and raised by a number of people at IBM Connect is a free developer server license. All other web development technologies (including IBM Websphere Liberty) provide it. This is one other aspect in which Domino is stuck firmly in the past.

Rich Text and the Notes Client should be left to die. The rest of the world has moved on from both. Whatever the future, sooner or later Domino developers and customers will also have to.

If app dev means a completely different path, thank you Phil Riand and co for XPages as well as the rest of the OpenNTF Domino API development team. They have made me more capable of approaching non-ICS development options.

Modernization is insufficient. What is needed is innovation. Sure, Java 8 and various other things are necessary, but if modernization just gives you the same app capabilities with a prettier face running on technology that's more current, that's not going to be enough.

To give customers a compelling reason to stay, IBM will have to give them easy ways to make the apps do things they couldn't do before. Make it possible for the apps to hook into and be hooked into by Verse and cognitive computing technologies. It's got to be natural, not a context switch between UIs. In the Verse way of doing things, the apps that the customer has invested decades in, and the content and actions associated with those apps, have to fit right in with the people and their content and actions associated with them.

@Volker I didn't start this direction...but i find it strange, if someone expresses his positive opinion only to be "taught" by the next discussion participant, that his point of view must be completely wrong.
Anyway, back to the original topic of this blog post. My app dev wishlist would include:
1) Upgrade the Eclipse framework in Domino Designer to a more current level or (even better) turn Designer into an Eclipse plugin so that it can run with the latest version of Eclipse.
2) Make Designer aware of Connections services and Sametime IM "out-of-the-box" so that integrating capabilities from Connections and Sametime into Domino web applications becomes a lot easier.
3) Provide a runtime environment for XPages on Android and iOS including offline capabilities (similar to Teamstudio Unplugged).

Our customers are asking for Domino to run their apps in a SaaS configuration without additional cost (not with a separately charged PaaS like SoftLayer which they could do today). The other component is full support for HTML 5. Note the customers aren't currently asking for new development tools themselves; it seems like it is primarily for those of us partners who still work in the Yellowverse space.

The customers want Domino as the Platform, but do not want to have to pay for an underlying IaaS or have to manage the infrastructure completely. In short, they want to use Domino as a PaaS, but have it managed and priced as a SaaS. Currently, it's not available form IBM as a PaaS or SaaS in the correct pricing or management. IBM does offer some form as PaaS through BlueMix and as a package on SoftLayer, but the pricing and limitations are not consistent with their needs.

What they really want (but it has been prohibited thus far) is to be able to add NSF files to the hosted Domino servers that get configured for Connections Cloud Mail/SmartCloud Notes.

+1 for de-integrating DDE so that we can build our own IDE based on a modern Eclipse.

Based on the assumption that most of the work coming the way of developers is going to be maintenance, presumably of applications written by somebody else, I would suggest some boring, unsexy improvements:

1. A standard way to do testing (integrating JUnit would be cool)
2. A special 'Source-Control-Compatible' on-disk-project which ignores the fluff such as timestamps, modifiedby, etc. These make source control maddening.